Legendary Russian sprinter Alexander Popov received an Olympic Order during the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session taking place at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.
Aleksandr POPOV, Timothy Tsun Ting FOK, Gian-Franco KASPER awarded the Olympic Order #IOCSession
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) October 8, 2018
Along with President of the International Ski Federation, Gian-Franco Kasper, as well as Hong Kong honorary IOC member Timothy Fok, Popov accepted the award that is bestowed upon those with ‘particularly distinguished contributions to the Olympic movement.’
As a swimmer, Popov succeeded in winning the 50m and 100m freestyle at the Barcelona Games in 1992, and then again at the 1996 Atlanta Games to become the first man to ever perform the feat.
Post-retirement, Popov served as the OC Athletes’ Commission Representative on the Foundation Board of the World Anti-Doping Agency from 2005-2010 and was a member of the IOC from 2000 to 2016. He has been an Honorary IOC Member since 2016, while also serving on several other commissions.
9-time Olympic medalist Popov was most recently up for President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), but lost to four-time Olympic fencing champion Stanislav Pozdnyakov.
He was good at swimming the front crawl.